The Safe House is a funky restaurant in downtown Milwaukee, and if the hotel desk clerk hadn’t told us exactly where to find it, we certainly never would have wound up there.

You have to know where to look, you have to know the password or suffer mild humiliation to get in, and if you want to leave the place properly, you have to puzzle your way into a secret passageway.

The food was forgettable, but the faked exclusivity was memorable.

It’s the same risk-and-reward model we used when we developed the skywalk system in downtown Des Moines.

An out-of-towner who’s not in on the secrets of access can plod along the sidewalks for blocks in the cruel summer sun, gazing jealously at the happy skywalk folks through the salty sweat in his eyes.

Look at us, the fortunate ones seem to say. Even though we’re in Iowa, we’re not particularly uncomfortable.

To be excluded in winter means trudging through cold winds and snow, the skywalks beckoning like the warm glow in a cabin window. Longing to be there, imagining it with more and more desperation until you believe you can actually hear the friendly conversation – but no, it’s just another shivering misfit asking if you’d like to share an ambulance.

Not just anyone can be a skywalk person. You have to want it.

It’s a sorting process, and those in the know are naturally smug – it’s the same feeling enjoyed by college fraternity members, or people who know how to replace piston rings.

It’s empowering to know about the entrances, many of which suggest Harry Potter heading off to his first day at Hogwarts. On Fifth Avenue, you can duck through an unremarkable brown steel door, and emerge into the comforts of carpeting and air conditioning. Sometimes there’s even a busker. One who busks.

It’s possible to disappear through a seemingly random door in a ground-floor hallway in the Financial Center, then pop out in a spot with a big-city aura.

There’s even a television built right into the wall, tuned to a financial channel so that when you’re away from your desk and enjoying a noontime stroll, you can be certain that the nation is still falling apart.

In Capital Square, you can open a white door and go clanging and booming up the steel stairs to the skywalk level, although I suppose many less adventurous people would prefer to use the escalator. This is the door I once flung open to find a couple smooching. Now I knock first.

And when you saunter out of the downtown Quizno’s, there’s a secret stairway to the skywalk that’s wide enough for just one person. An average-sized person at that. If an offensive lineman ever gets wedged in there, we can expect panic, angry speeches and, eventually, a new political movement demanding toasted sandwiches for all.

It took decades to acquire all of this inside information. Now the city plans to ruin it by installing better signage and, perhaps, making the ground-level entrances a bit more visible and inviting. I won’t have an edge anymore.

The next thing you know, they’ll lay bare the rest of Greater Des Moines’ secrets. They’ll tell everybody that 22nd Street, Clive Road and 86th Street are all the same thing. Ordinary citizens will learn about the rocket-powered escape pods standing ready for the City Council if the Saylorville Dam bursts.

Once the skywalk system is truly public, when the doors have been thrown wide to accommodate the common folks, what will life be like for the rest of us? We’ll feel common, that’s what.

We’ll have to share the TVs and the buskers, but that’s it. I’m not disclosing the mysterious route to Panera’s.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com